The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) ® today announced that executives from Bosch, Cisco and Comcast will participate in the Fast Innovation: Disrupt or be Disrupted keynote panel at the 2015 International CES®. Owned and produced by CEA, the 2015 CES, the world’s gathering place for all who thrive on the business of consumer technologies, will run January 6-9, 2015, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The Fast Innovation keynote, slated for 11 AM Wednesday, January 7 at the Westgate Las Vegas (formerly Las Vegas Hilton) Theater will feature top executives including John Chambers, Cisco chairman and CEO, Neil Smit, president and CEO of Comcast Cable and Werner Struth, member, board of management, Robert Bosch GmbH. The session will be moderated by David Kirkpatrick, founder, host and CEO of Techonomy and will feature a discussion on the evolution of the connections between people, data, business and innovation as enabled by the Internet of Everything and a connected society.
“We are very excited to hear from these creative leaders who are connecting with their customers to create new products and services,” said Gary Shapiro, president and CEO, CEA. “We look forward to their insights on the future of personalization of services and how the availability of consumer data is changing relationships between companies and their customers”.
John Chambers, chairman and CEO, Cisco. Chambers has helped grow the company from $70 million when he joined Cisco in January 1991, to $1.2 billion when he assumed the role of CEO, to $47 billion in fiscal year 2014. In 2006, Chambers was named Chairman of the Board, in addition to his CEO role. Chambers has received numerous awards for his leadership over his past 18 years at the helm of Cisco, including the 2012 Bower Award for Business Leadership from the Franklin Institute, Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People,” one of Barron’s’ “World’s Best CEOs,” the “Best Boss in America” by 20/20, one of BusinessWeek’s “Top 25 Executives Worldwide,” “CEO of the Year” by Chief Executive Magazine, the Business Council’s “Award for Corporate Leadership,” and “Best Investor Relations by a CEO” from Investor Relations Magazine three times.
Neil Smit, president and CEO, Comcast Cable and EVP, Comcast Corp. In this role, Smit is responsible for all business aspects of the Company’s cable operations. Smit joined Comcast in March 2010 from Charter Communications where he served as CEO and director since 2005. Prior to joining Charter, Smit was the president of Time Warner’s America Online Access Business, where he oversaw Internet access services, including America Online (AOL), CompuServe and Netscape ISPs. He also served at AOL as Executive VP, member services, and COO of MapQuest. Smit also was a regional president with Nabisco and served in a number of management positions at Pillsbury. For five and a half years, Smit served on active duty with the Navy SEAL Teams and retired from the service as a Lieutenant Commander.
Werner Struth, member, board of management and chairman, Robert Bosch GmbH. Struth has been a member of the board of management of Robert Bosch GmbH and Chairman, Robert Bosch LLC since January 2012. In these capacities, he is responsible for Bosch activities in North and South America, global manufacturing coordination, production system development, investment planning and environmental protection. He is also responsible for the Group’s Industrial Technology business sector including the Packaging Technology and Drive and Control Technology divisions. During his 25-year career at Bosch, Struth has held a variety of positions with increasing responsibility in engineering, human resources, manufacturing and operations, purchasing, quality and management in Germany and Japan. Struth joined the Fraunhofer Society’s Institute for Production Technology (IPT) and earned his PhD in general and theoretical mechanical engineering at RWTH Aachen.
David Kirkpatrick, founder, host and CEO of Techonomy. Kirkpatrick is a journalist, commentator about technology, and author of the bestselling book “The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company that is Connecting the World,” published in 32 countries. He spent 25 years at Fortune, and founded and hosted its Brainstorm and Brainstorm Tech conferences. In addition to writing for Techonomy, he contributes to Forbes and Vanity Fair and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
The Fast Innovation Keynote is part of the 2015 International CES keynote lineup. Other keynoters will include CBS Corp. president and CEO, Leslie Moonves, Ford Motor Co. president and CEO Mark Fields, Samsung Electronics’ president and CEO, Boo-Keun Yoon, chairman of the board of management of Daimler AG and Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars, Dr. Dieter Zetsche and Intel CEO, Brian Krzanich. Additional details are available at CESweb.org/Conference/Keynotes.
The 2015 CES will feature more than 3,500 exhibitors unveiling the latest consumer technology products and services across the entire ecosystem of consumer technologies.
